She was 21 years old, the product of a conservative Southern California family, newly divorced and ready to experience life in the free-wheeling Haight-Ashbury district.

She rented an attic apartment and enrolled at San Francisco State, where she eagerly participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War sit-ins and demonstrations.

Then Mary Alice discovered the black power movement.

She became a strident devotee of George Jackson, the charismatic but militant San Quentin inmate who had gained international fame for his best-selling prison classic, "Soledad Brother." She wrote letters to Black Panther Johnny Spain, who was also incarcerated at San Quentin.

And she began associating with members of the Black Liberation Army, a violent offshoot of the Black Panthers that would become implicated in the Aug. 29, 1971, killing of a police officer at San Francisco's Ingleside Station. There is reason to believe that Mary Alice may have played a role in the attack and the slaying of Sgt. John V. Young.

But less than two weeks after the attack on Ingleside Station, Mary Alice disappeared, never to be heard from again.

Thirty-seven years would pass before an investigator with the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department would determine that an unidentified body found floating in a canal near Modesto on Sept. 11, 1971, was Mary Alice.

She had been stabbed 65 times. Ten of the wounds were fatal, the rest defensive. Her body had been buried in the Patterson District Cemetery. Atop her grave was a beige stone that said, simply, "Jane Doe."

Investigators don't know who killed Mary Alice - or why.

But on June 8, seven alleged former members of the Black Liberation Army are scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on charges that they murdered Sgt. Young, and it's possible that the proceedings will shed new light on the sad story of Mary Alice Willey.

Mary Alice stepped lightly during her short time on earth. Only a few people remember her well. But a handful of photographs capture the arc of her too-short life.

Among the earliest photographs are black-and-white images of a chubby little girl standing with her parents in front of a ranch-style house in Anaheim.

She was an only child, and her parents were in their 40s when she was born. Together they attended a nearby Christian Scientist Church, said her best friend, Barbara Spiker.

Mary Alice's mother, Maxine, adored her daughter and would do anything for her, Spiker said. But her father, Paul, was aloof with an impenetrable personality. Mary Alice, Spiker said, saw her parents as old and uncaring. She was convinced they didn't want children, and she was a mistake.

Mary Alice was smart. She skipped a grade in elementary school.

In eighth and ninth grades, she decided to go by the name Carol Willey. That was how she was listed in her eighth- and ninth-grade yearbooks. Spiker thinks the name change was an attempt by Mary Alice to re-create herself and distinguish herself from the staid personalities of her parents.

By the time she entered Loara High School, Mary Alice was once again using her given name. She became involved in activities typical for high school girls in the early and mid-1960s. She joined the French Club and spent three years in Future Homemakers of America. She was also a member of the National Honor Society. Yet she barely left an impression.

"She was the kind of girl who was quiet and nice but not really out there," classmate Pam Menazer recalled. "She was just kind of on the edge of the crowd."

But Mary Alice was also willful, according to Spiker.

"She had a certain amount of rebellion in her," Spiker said. "We used to drive up to Hollywood and cruise around, and Mary would want us to get some alcohol. She had a wild streak that most people never knew."

Mary Alice appears in only a few photographs in her high school yearbooks.

In her junior year, she is seen in group photographs for French Club and Future Homemakers of America.

In the French Club photograph, she is seated in the front row wearing a horizontally striped sweater, ankles crossed, hands folded on her lap. She looks glum.

In another photograph from that year, a couple of FHA girls are serving lunch to members of the faculty. The caption contains no names, but Mary Alice can be seen in the background, looking at the camera from between the other kids.

The only photo of her as a senior is her class picture. It shows a pretty young lady wearing an off-the-shoulder evening gown, hair shoulder-length in a Marlo Thomas flip. For once, she's smiling.

Mary Alice graduated from Loara High in June 1965, at age 16, and in the fall entered California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, where she met a fellow student named Andrew Broom McGregor.

Within months, they decided to marry.

There is a photograph of Mary Alice at her wedding shower. She is just 17. A present is open on her lap, and she is holding a teacup. Her hair is in a tall bouffant-style hairdo. Her smile is wide and pretty.

She and McGregor were married on June 16, 1966.

McGregor, now a real estate professional living in Boulder, Colo., said he and Mary Alice were typical late-'60s college kids. They liked rock 'n' roll and protested the war in Vietnam. Mary Alice let her hair grow long and learned to pluck a guitar.

But in 1968, McGregor asked for a divorce. Mary Alice didn't want the marriage to end, he said, but he'd decided he was too young to be married. He wanted his freedom.

After the divorce, McGregor never heard from Mary Alice again.

Shortly after the breakup, Mary Alice dropped out of Cal Poly and joined the migration of young people drawn to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district.

She settled into an apartment on Page Street, just a few blocks from the intersection of Haight and Ashbury, and in fall 1970, enrolled at San Francisco State using her married name, Mary McGregor.

It was a tumultuous time on campus. Just two years earlier, minority students, demanding more senior faculty of color and a new ethnic studies curriculum, had launched a student strike that became the most violent episode in campus history. As the nation watched, police hit striking students with batons, and hundreds of students were arrested after throwing rocks and firebombs.

The mood at the school had cooled a bit by fall of 1970, but not much. Student anger at the Vietnam War and at society's unfair treatment of black people was high.

Mary Alice attended class for only two semesters, but while she was there, she met a fellow student named Patrick Warren McDowell. A big Irishman with the gift of gab, McDowell previously had been convicted of burglary, auto theft and a variety of other petty crimes. He said he had been recruited to the college under a program to bring ex-convicts to college campuses. San Francisco State has no record of him attending, but officials say their record-keeping from that time might not be completely accurate.

He and Mary Alice dated casually. McDowell said they mostly went together to protests, sit-ins and demonstrations and what was called "street theater."

A photograph from 1970 shows Mary Alice and McDowell in her attic apartment. She is wearing a loose, floral-print dress. McDowell is embracing her from behind. On a wall is a blow-up of a check from the "Bank of Amerika." The phrase "Keep the faith baby" is painted whimsically on the wall.

Barbara Spiker recalled talking to her childhood friend on the phone after she'd moved to San Francisco.

Mary Alice, she said, was excited about the fun she was having. She was a San Francisco hippie and loving it.

McDowell described himself as a die-hard militant. He said he was a member of several radical organizations, including the Symbionese Liberation Army, the notorious group responsible for the slaying of Oakland schools Superintendent Marcus Foster and the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

But his actions weren't always politically motivated.

Needing money, McDowell hooked up in February 1971 with another ex-con named Robert Barr, who had hatched a plan to rob Sugar Bowl Ski Lodge near Lake Tahoe.

On Feb. 8, McDowell borrowed Mary Alice's car and drove with Barr to Sugar Bowl. Armed with a submachine gun and a revolver, they entered the lodge late in the evening, rounded up a half-dozen employees and tied them up. They believed the safe contained $100,000 in cash, but none of the employees knew the combination.

As McDowell watched over the employees, Barr went to the manager's home adjacent to the lodge. His intention was to force the manager at gunpoint to open the safe, but the manager saw him coming, grabbed his shotgun and started firing into the snowy darkness.

Barr and McDowell fled, but Placer County sheriff's deputies took them into custody after a two-hour search. They were transported to Auburn to stand trial for kidnapping, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Inside the car McDowell had borrowed from Mary Alice, deputies found a revolver. It belonged to her. McDowell said he doesn't know why Mary Alice had the gun. She was never considered a suspect in the Sugar Bowl job, and her car eventually was returned to her. The gun remained with Placer County.

McDowell complained to his attorney, Robert Zweig, that jail conditions in Placer County were horrible. He said he was beaten daily and fed once a day in a dog dish. Zweig advised him to find a wife. A wife, he said, could file complaints on McDowell's behalf and get him better treatment.

In May 1971, McDowell and Barr went on trial in the Placer County courthouse under tight security. In the middle of the trial, Zweig asked the presiding judge to officiate over the marriage of his client and his client's girlfriend - Mary Alice.

Superior Court Judge Ronald G. Camerondeclined, explaining that to do so would be a conflict of interest. Zweig obtained a mail-order pastorship from the Universal Life Church and, during a recess in the trial, stood up and turned to face his client and then Mary Alice, who was sitting in the front row of the gallery.

"I now pronounce you man and wife," he said. It was May 20, 1971.

Stories about the wedding appeared in The Chronicle and other Northern California newspapers.

A photograph in The Chronicle shows Mary Alice standing in front of the courthouse and holding up her marriage license. In the background, law enforcement officers with shotguns and high-powered rifles are positioned in front of and on top of the courthouse. The headline says, "Shotgun Weddings Do Happen."

McDowell admits the wedding was a sham.

"She never would have married me otherwise," he said.

McDowell and Barr were convicted on July 7, 1971. McDowell was sentenced to five years to life in prison. He never heard from Mary Alice again.

Today, McDowell lives quietly in Salem, Ore. He has remarried and, according to authorities, has not been in serious trouble with the law since serving time for the 1971 crime.

He was reluctant to talk about Mary Alice or the past.

"There are things out there that are still alive," he said.

Mary Alice's killer, McDowell said, is still on the loose.

McDowell has two photographs of Mary Alice that reflect her involvement in the black power movement.

One shows Mary Alice looking confident, her face thrust forward and hair swept back. Near the top of her crew-neck sweater is a pin in the form of a black power fist.

The other shows her in a large, black, Afro wig, wearing a fake fur coat, double-breasted like a peacoat. She has a serene smile. On the back of the photo, Mary Alice had written: "To Patrick. Je t'aime beaucoup mon homme. Soyez sage! Venceremos!! Mary."

Translation: "I love you very much my man. Be good! We shall triumph!! Mary."

Mary Alice had become infatuated with George Jackson, a militant prison inmate and best-selling author who had become a powerful voice for prison reform and civil rights during his years behind bars at Soledad State Prison in Monterey County.

He had been sent to Soledad in 1961 at age 18 after being convicted of robbing a gas station of $70. He was sentenced to one year to life under California's indeterminate sentencing law in effect at the time.

He read widely in prison and became a Marxist. As his reputation grew, the Black Panthers decided to capitalize on his popularity by making him a field marshal in their organization. In 1970, he and two other inmates were accused of beating and hurling a white prison guard to his death from a Soledad tier, apparently in retaliation for the exercise yard slayings of three black inmates. Known as the Soledad Brothers, the three were transferred to San Quentin for trial.

In October 1970, Jackson published a collection of letters. "Soledad Brother," a searing indictment of the prison system. The book turned Jackson into an international celebrity, especially among the new left.

McDowell said Mary Alice loved Jackson and would do anything for him.

"She bought into his big plan, which was to get out of San Quentin and start the revolution," McDowell said. "She talked about how great it was going to be when they were together."

He said Mary Alice once asked him to get involved in a scheme to help Jackson, but McDowell declined.

"I told her, 'That's your thing. Leave me out of it,' " he said.

On Aug. 21, 1971, a young lawyer named Stephen Bingham visited Jackson at San Quentin. Authorities allege that Bingham smuggled a gun into the visiting room and gave it to Jackson, who allegedly hid it under an Afro wig that Bingham had also brought in.

As Jackson was being led back to his cell, a guard noticed the gun. Jackson drew the weapon and, paraphrasing Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, declared: "This is it, gentlemen. The dragon has come."

It became the most violent day in California prison history. Inmates freed from their cells murdered three guards and two white inmate trustees. They tried to kill several others.

As the prison went to lockdown, Jackson and another inmate ran across the prison yard. A guard in the tower fired twice. Jackson was dead before he hit the ground.

Marin County Superior Court Judge Terry Boren, who as an assistant district attorney prosecuted the inmates known as the San Quentin Six for their roles in the bloody prison uprising, remembers seeing the name Mary McGregor on documents related to Jackson. He says he may have seen her name in San Quentin's visitors log. Law enforcement officials say her name shows up on some documents related to San Quentin, but the full extent of her involvement remains a mystery.

Seven days after Jackson's death, a bomb went off at the Bank of America branch at Stonestown mall, and all available officers from San Francisco's Ingleside Station rushed to investigate.

A short time later, a young white woman entered the station to report a missing purse. After she finished filling out a report, she walked out and was seen shining a flashlight toward the street.

Twenty minutes later, a car pulled up. Several black men got out and walked into the station.

One shoved a shotgun into the voice grate of the station's bulletproof glass and fired. Sgt. John V. Young was hit in the chest and died on the station floor. A civilian aide was wounded.

Two days afterward, The Chronicle received an anonymous letter from a group calling itself the "George L. Jackson Assault Squad of the Black Liberation Army." The note said the Ingleside Station was attacked to retaliate for Jackson's death.

Police have long thought the woman who had come to the station to report her stolen purse was a lookout connected to the BLA, and they believed that woman was Mary Alice.

Witnesses to the Ingleside attack - the wounded civilian and an officer who had been in the back of the station - described the woman for a police sketch artist.

The sketch shows a young woman in a blond wig, parted in the middle. She had high cheekbones, a stern mouth and octagonal, rimless glasses. An accompanying bulletin described the lookout as attractive, about 5 feet, 9 inches and wearing a micro-mini skirt and "modish" tan coat. It said she had "somewhat heavy legs."

The sketch and description bore a resemblance to Mary Alice.

There is also a San Francisco Police Department memo, undated but believed to have been written not long after the Ingleside attack.

Detective Ken Hedrick of the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department, the investigator who identified Mary Alice's body and is trying to solve her murder, said the memo was written by an SFPD homicide lieutenant. It says, "Intelligence gathered in Marin County indicates that the lookout on the Ingleside shooting was one Mary McGregor."

Inspector Joe Engler, the San Francisco Police Department's lead investigator on the Ingleside case, would neither confirm nor deny the memo's existence. The department is currently investigating and helping to prosecute seven alleged former members of the Black Liberation Army for murder in connection with Young's death.

One more thing piques the investigators' curiosity. The name given by the woman who reported her purse missing: Carol George. Carol was the name Mary Alice went by in junior high school. George Jackson's death was cited as the justification of the attack.

The investigation into the Ingleside attack has been long and fraught with controversy.

Investigators tracked some of the suspects to New Orleans and extracted incriminating statements from them, but in 1975 that evidence was thrown out by a judge after it was alleged that New Orleans police used torture to get the information.

The case languished for decades until 1999, when San Francisco police made one last effort to investigate it. A re-examination of a cigarette lighter found at the station yielded a thumbprint allegedly belonging to a member of the Black Liberation Army. In addition, a BLA member apparently agreed to testify against his former associates.

Eight men, allegedly all former BLA members, were arrested in 2007. It was a controversial move, considering the length of time that has passed since the attack and the advanced ages of the accused.

Authorities charged them with murder and conspiracy, but a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had expired on some of the conspiracy charges. One man, charged only with conspiracy, was dropped from the case.

Now the seven remaining suspects are about to defend themselves in San Francisco Superior Court for Young's murder.

Thirteen days after the Ingleside shooting, on Sept. 11, 1971, Mary Alice's body was found floating in the Delta-Mendota canal.

She was wearing only a handmade blouse and an earring when she was pulled from the water. The coroner said she had been dead for 12 to 24 hours.

She had 65 stab wounds, most of them defensive, but at least 10 were considered fatal. One stab wound entered under her left breast and hit her spinal column. One wound penetrated her skull and entered her brain. Her throat was cut.

An autopsy indicated that someone tried to cut off her hands and failed. Her killer then tried to cut off a couple of fingers and failed at that, too. One thumb was removed with much hacking.

But she had no identification. Investigators couldn't determine who she was. For 37 years, she lay in a grave marked only by a large stone that said "Jane Doe."

In the spring of 2008, Hedrick, the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department investigator, decided to see if new technologies could help identify the woman found dead in the canal back in 1971. He had the body exhumed, a forensic anthropologist made a facial reconstruction, and technicians tried to get a DNA sample for a match.

In late summer, a cousin of Mary Alice stumbled upon a short newspaper story explaining the detective's interest in solving the case. The cousin, Corey Oisen of Santa Cruz County, called Hedrick, and the two compared notes. Oisen arranged for a DNA test.

It was a match. Finally, the body in the canal had a name.

On Oct. 31, a small ceremony for Mary Alice was held at the Patterson cemetery.

A perfectly rectangular hole was dug in the soft earth in the exact spot where she lay as Jane Doe. Atop the grave, a bronze casket.

Several chairs were placed in front of the casket, under a small tent-top. Three women took their seats. They were Mary Alice's first cousin, Mary Jones; Jones' daughter, Sally Wilson; and Oisen. Mary Alice's parents had passed away years ago, never knowing what became of their missing daughter.

The women prayed and sobbed as a police chaplain read a eulogy and talked about the terrible crime that had taken Mary Alice's life.

Mary Alice now has a proper gravestone. In it is carved her real name and the dates of her birth and death. There is an image of a lighthouse, to reflect the idea that her family never forgot about her and kept the light on for her.

I remember that case very well. When I saw the picture of her laying in the morgue, the hair coloring and profile reminded me if missing Donna Lass. So I posted about it and put the picture on the site. It was about that time, like a few days later, that the cousin called the police to say she thought that Jane Doe could be her cousin.